CELEBRATE JUNETEENTH 2023: Our Editorial | |
|
As we look ahead to celebrate our peoples' victory of A NATIONAL HOLIDAY, our people's JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION - "BLACK FREEDOM DAY", we can’t help but acknowledge the challenges we face are growing. On Sunday, June 18th at the FRUIT OF LABOR WORLD CULTURAL CENTER in Raleigh, we are convening all Black activists, visual artists, music, poetry, independent film/video makers, Black cultural workers, etc. to bring their craft, artistry, and talents to our JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION at the Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center! Moreover, bring your creative thinking to our discussion about how to use our talents to inspire, educate, engage, and liberate our people in our community's growing social, economic, and political crisis in the days ahead!
As we continue to celebrate the Black Workers for Justice's 40th anniversary AND PREPARE TO CELEBRATE June 2024 THE FRUIT OF LABOR WORLD CULTURAL CENTER's 25th ANNIVERSARY, the importance of the "centrality of the Black worker, as well as our Fruit Of Labor World Cultural Center's 25th year (founded on Juneteenth 1999), we will all be discussing how to revitalize our roles in a much needed powerful grassroots and community based working peoples and cultural movement.
YOU are invited to this upcoming 2023 JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION event! See you at the FOLWCC at 2:00 PM Sunday, June 18th!
Warmly,
The FRUIT OF LABOR WORLD CULTURAL CENTER VOLUNTEER STAFF
Click here to learn more about Juneteenth National Holiday.
| |
JUNE 2023 CALENDAR OF EVENTS | |
|
Tuesday, June 6; 12:00-1:00 PM; FOLWCC BIG SCREEN FREE LUNCHEON on the NC Budget & Tax Center's Zoom Informational Webinar
The NC Senate tax plan will double down on the path to zero income tax — keeping in place the elimination of the corporate income tax and reducing the personal income tax to 2.49 percent after 2029 — to benefit the very wealthy and big, profitable corporations. Two-thirds of the total tax cut will go to the richest people in our state, while the bottom 80 percent will get just one-third.
These tax cuts will dramatically impact North Carolina’s ability to provide good schools and affordable child care in every community, make health care and health providers accessible to all families, and ensure safe air and water is available to all. This is a failure to fulfill the responsibility entrusted to our leaders by the people, which is to consider the good of the many — not the wealth of the few — and enact policies that build a better future for us all.
Confirmed two speakers for the panel:
Saturday, June 10; 9:00 AM-5:00 PM; NC Chapter of the National Conference of Black Lawyers Retreat Place TBA. Contact Greg Moss at 704-773-7388 for more information.
Sunday, June 18; 2:00-5:00 PM; Our 22nd Annual Juneteenth and Father’s Day Celebration and Annual Spoons of Justice Cook-Off! We will also continue our Black Workers for Justice 40th Anniversary Celebration as well as honor Elder Bro. Billy Battle for his many decades of service to the Biltmore Hills Community! Sisters who can stir and brothers who can burn are challenged to enter their best dish in the Spoons of Justice Cook-Off. If your special recipe is smokin’ (and we mean delicious and not burned to a crisp), you might walk away with the Spoons of Justice Grand Prize Trophy! If it is not advisable for others to share in your culinary creation, come out and judge the dishes of those who rise to the challenge and enter a dish. Art, poetry, live music, good food, good news, good people, door prizes, Juneteenth Trivia Contest. $10 requested donation per person or 2 for $15. For more info and to register for the cook-off call 919-876-7187 or email Fruitoflaborwcc@netscape.com.
Monday, June 19; 12:00 PM sharp; Juneteenth – Black Freedom Day; Kick off our World Cultural Cinema Film series with docufilm "Wilmington on Fire". How white supremacist violent insurrection stole political and economic power from African Americans in 1898. Discussion on lessons learned (Basic Community/Workplace Organizing 101 series workshop) and NC Legislative Study Commission recommendations on REPARATIONS...Fellowship/Food/Discussion
Wednesday, June 12; 9:00 AM-5:00 PM; National Black Workers Center Summit; The “It’s Time” Summit is a one-day event in Washington, DC on June 21, 2023, focused entirely on the Black Worker Bill of Rights. The day will include interactive workshops, panels, and brain trusts. Plan on attending? REGISTER HERE: https://forms.gle/QvmitmZou85wXTER9
| |
|
Reserve the Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center for your Special Event!
The Fruit of Labor World Cultural Center is the perfect beautiful venue for your special event. Contact us today for information about our very reasonable rates and availability. Call (919) 876-7187, 919-231-2660 or email fruitoflaborwcc@netscape.com.
| |
BOYCOTT FLORIDA Video is in response to Gov. DeSantis and his racist right-wing allied representatives in the Florida State Legislature banning Black history from all public libraries, colleges and public schools. | |
|
We’ll Never Live in a World Without
Tina Turner
Portside.org
Tina Turner didn’t just pull off the greatest comeback in music history — she invented the whole concept of the comeback as we know it. She became a solo superstar when she was 44. Things like that simply don’t happen. That’s how old Brandy, Usher, Adam Levine, Lance Bass, and John Legend are right now. At that age, Tina Turner was just beginning.
Turner, who died Wednesday at 83, carried the whole story of American music in her voice, because in so many ways, she was that story, but she was also a lot more. She was Anna Mae Bullock from Nutbush, Tennessee, daughter of sharecroppers, fighting her way in and out of the chitlin circuit. She was just a kid when she got famous, as half of Ike & Tina Turner. Her deep-country voice and his guitar always made a fearsome combo, in Fifties hits like “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” and “I Idolize You.” “The emotions I expressed were real because I lived those feelings,” she wrote in Rolling Stone in a 2019 essay. “Even ‘Private Dancer’ — which seems to be about prostitution, but is also about wishes, hopes, and dreams — tells the story of women like me, caught up in sad situations, who somehow find a way to go on.”
Her defining hit was “What’s Love Got To Do With It,” a shocker from the summer of 1984. The song has gotten so familiar, it’s easy to overlook how it shocked the audience, on the radio in between Madonna, Prince and Cyndi Lauper. Unlike anyone else near her age, she had zero interest in passing for young. This woman had lived. She’d stared down more hard times than your miserable Smiths-loving teenage mind could imagine. The audience didn’t know what she’d been through — she wasn’t telling those stories yet. But even a kid could hear the rage and pain in her voice. A grandmother, and tougher than anyone. Read more here.
| |
Sounds of Blackness - Juneteenth Celebration | | | | |
